There isn’t a supported way to do this.

Looking at the code, it seems that it automatically sets ModelAdmin.list_display_links to the first element if you don’t set it to anything. So the easiest way might be to override the __init__ method in your ModelAdmin subclass to unset that attribute on initialization:

class HitAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('user','ip','user_agent','hitcount')
    search_fields = ('ip','user_agent')
    date_hierarchy = 'created'

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(HitAdmin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.list_display_links = []

This appears to work, after a very cursory test. I can’t guarantee that it won’t break anything elsewhere, or that it won’t be broken by future changes to Django, though.

Edit after comment:

No need to patch the source, this would work:

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if self.list_display_links:
            unset_list_display = True
        else:
            unset_list_display = False
        super(HitAdmin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        if unset_list_display:
            self.list_display_links = []

But I highly doubt any patch would be accepted into Django, since this breaks something that the code explicitly does at the moment.

You could also be ridiculously hacky about it (if you didn’t want to fuss with overriding init) and provide a value for the first element that basically looks like this:

</a>My non-linked value<a>

I know, I know, not very pretty, but perhaps less anxiety about breaking something elsewhere since all we’re doing is changing markup.

Here’s some sample code about how this works:

class HitAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('user_no_link','ip','user_agent','hitcount')

    def user_no_link(self, obj):
        return u'</a>%s<a>' % obj
    user_no_link.allow_tags = True
    user_no_link.short_description = "user"

Side Note: You could also improve the readability of the output (since you don’t want it to be a link) by returning return u'%s' % obj.get_full_name() which might be kinda neat depending on your use case.

In your model admin set:

list_display_links = (None,)

That should do it. (Works in 1.1.1 anyway.)

Link to docs: list_display_links

As user, omat, mentioned in a comment above, any attempt to simply remove the links does not prevent users from still accessing the change page manually. However, that, too, is easy enough to remedy:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin)
    # Other stuff here
    def change_view(self, request, obj=None):
        from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
        from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('admin:myapp_mymodel_changelist'))

Just for the notes, you may modify changelist_view:

class SomeAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def changelist_view(self, request, extra_context=None):
        self.list_display_links = (None, )
        return super(SomeAdmin, self).changelist_view(request, extra_context=None)

This works fine for me.

with django 1.6.2 you can do like this:

class MyAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    def get_list_display_links(self, request, list_display):
        return []

it will hide all auto generated links.

In Django 1.7 and later, you can do

class HitAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display_links = None

Doing this properly requires two steps:

• Hide the edit link, so nobody stumbles on the detail page (change view) by mistake.
• Modify the change view to redirect back to the list view.

The second part is important: if you don’t do this then people will still be able to access the change view by entering a URL directly (which presumably you don’t want). This is closely related to what OWASP term an “Insecure Direct Object Reference”.

As part of this answer I’ll build a ReadOnlyMixin class that can be used to provide all the functionality shown.

Hiding the Edit Link

Django 1.7 makes this really easy: you just set list_display_links to None.

class ReadOnlyMixin(): # Add inheritance from "object" if using Python 2
    list_display_links = None

Django 1.6 (and presumably earlier) don’t make this so simple. Quite a lot of answers to this question have suggested overriding __init__ in order to set list_display_links after the object has been constructed, but this makes it harder to reuse (we can only override the constructor once).

I think a better option is to override Django’s get_list_display_links method as follows:

def get_list_display_links(self, request, list_display):
    """
    Return a sequence containing the fields to be displayed as links
    on the changelist. The list_display parameter is the list of fields
    returned by get_list_display().

    We override Django's default implementation to specify no links unless
    these are explicitly set.
    """
    if self.list_display_links or not list_display:
        return self.list_display_links
    else:
        return (None,)

This makes our mixin easy to use: it hides the edit link by default but allows us to add it back in if required for a particular admin view.

Redirecting to the List View

We can change the behaviour of the detail page (change view) by overriding the change_view method. Here’s an extension to the technique suggested by Chris Pratt which automatically finds the right page:

enable_change_view = False

def change_view(self, request, object_id, form_url='', extra_context=None):
    """
    The 'change' admin view for this model.

    We override this to redirect back to the changelist unless the view is
    specifically enabled by the "enable_change_view" property.
    """
    if self.enable_change_view:
        return super(ReportMixin, self).change_view(
            request,
            object_id,
            form_url,
            extra_context
        )
    else:
        from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
        from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

        opts = self.model._meta
        url = reverse('admin:{app}_{model}_changelist'.format(
            app=opts.app_label,
            model=opts.model_name,
        ))
        return HttpResponseRedirect(url)

Again this is customisable – by toggling enable_change_view to True you can switch the details page back on.

Removing the “Add ITEM” Button

Finally, you might want to override the following methods in order to prevent people adding or deleting new items.

def has_add_permission(self, request):
    return False

def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
    return False

These changes will:

• disable the “Add item” button
• prevent people directly adding items by appending /add to the URL
• prevent bulk delete

Finally you can remove the “Delete selected items” action by modifying the actions parameter.

Putting it all together

Here’s the completed mixin:

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

class ReadOnlyMixin(): # Add inheritance from "object" if using Python 2

    actions = None

    enable_change_view = False

    def get_list_display_links(self, request, list_display):
        """
        Return a sequence containing the fields to be displayed as links
        on the changelist. The list_display parameter is the list of fields
        returned by get_list_display().

        We override Django's default implementation to specify no links unless
        these are explicitly set.
        """
        if self.list_display_links or not list_display:
            return self.list_display_links
        else:
            return (None,)

    def change_view(self, request, object_id, form_url='', extra_context=None):
        """
        The 'change' admin view for this model.

        We override this to redirect back to the changelist unless the view is
        specifically enabled by the "enable_change_view" property.
        """
        if self.enable_change_view:
            return super(ReportMixin, self).change_view(
                request,
                object_id,
                form_url,
                extra_context
            )
        else:
            opts = self.model._meta
            url = reverse('admin:{app}_{model}_changelist'.format(
                app=opts.app_label,
                model=opts.model_name,
            ))
            return HttpResponseRedirect(url)

    def has_add_permission(self, request):
        return False

    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

just write list_display_links = None in your admin

In more “recent” versions of Django, since at least 1.9, it is possible to simple determine the add, change and delete permissions on the admin class. See the django admin documentation for reference. Here is an example:

@admin.register(Object)
class Admin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    def has_add_permission(self, request):
        return False

    def has_change_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

I overrided get_list_display_links method and action to None.

class ChangeLogAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    actions = None
    list_display = ('asset', 'field', 'before_value', 'after_value', 'operator', 'made_at')

    fieldsets = [
        (None, {'fields': ()}),
    ]

    def __init__(self, model, admin_site):
        super().__init__(model, admin_site)

    def get_list_display_links(self, request, list_display):
        super().get_list_display_links(request, list_display)
        return None

I build a mixin based on @simpleigh ‘s solution.

class DeactivatableChangeViewAdminMixin:
    """
    Mixin to be used in model admins to disable the detail page / change view.
    """
    enable_change_view = True

    def can_see_change_view(self, request) -> bool:
        """
        This method determines if the change view is disabled or visible.
        """
        return self.enable_change_view

    def get_list_display_links(self, request, list_display):
        """
        When we don't want to show the change view, there is no need for having a link to it
        """
        if not self.can_see_change_view(request=request):
            return None
        return super().get_list_display_links(request, list_display)

    def change_view(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        """
        The 'change' admin view for this model.

        We override this to redirect back to the changelist unless the view is
        specifically enabled by the "enable_change_view" property.
        """
        if self.can_see_change_view(request=request):
            return super().change_view(request, *args, **kwargs)
        else:
            opts = self.model._meta
            url = reverse('admin:{app}_{model}_changelist'.format(
                app=opts.app_label,
                model=opts.model_name,
            ))
            return HttpResponseRedirect(url)

The benefit is that you can reuse it and you can furthermore make it conditional

Build for django 3.2.8.

To be used like this for a static approach:

class MyAdmin(DeactivatableChangeViewAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
  enable_change_view = False

And like this for a non-static one:

class MyAdmin(DeactivatableChangeViewAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):  
    def can_see_change_view(self, request) -> bool:
        return request.user.my_condition